


Possiblities

by TheTartWitch



Category: Seven Kingdoms Trilogy - Kristin Cashore
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Other, but only slightly - Freeform, not graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-04 23:48:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6680881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTartWitch/pseuds/TheTartWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haedyn sees the King in his dreams. He's seen the King's death, the Queen's escape, the Princess's rise to power, and he knows something no one else knows: the future has plans for the past, and if he's going to set things straight, the plan ends in his death (and consequent resurrection). Monsea will make it out of Leck's hands.</p><p>Title from John Sculley's quote.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Possiblities

**Author's Note:**

> Literally nothing from the books changes. Just an OMC insert in this part of the story, because I thought it might be interesting to write some Graceling stuff.

He shot awake, chest heaving and blankets thrown haphazardly. The other servants didn't look up or even appear to notice; his dreams weren't anything new or worth paying attention to, even if he once helped Miraille find her missing pair of shoes or shown Kaidyt how to get the wasps out of the castle's attic without getting stung. He actually preferred it that way; less people to bring it up in front of King Leck, who might take an interest to a servant boy with an undocumented Grace. He didn’t want that happening.  

King Leck's voice was like a poisonous fog, affecting everyone it touched, but for some reason it had never quite worked on Haedyn. He felt the effects as they slid over him,  _fetch me that book, boy; have you seen my wife? d_ _aughter?_  

Haedyn had dreamed about the king, before ever coming to the castle. He'd known the man's eyes would stop on him when he arrived but there'd be no true focus there. He'd known the queen would lock herself away, taking her daughter and her most trusted and favored servants with her.  

He'd seen the king's death at the hands of a brown-haired girl with dazed but sharp eyes and an aim like a true marksman, at a table surrounded by the royal family of the queen. He knew how it all ended. 

He'd seen his own death.  

He rose, mechanically, to bundle his blankets into the corner allotted him and dresses quickly, as he always does. Today is the day that begins everything. It doesn't matter what he saw last night; the kind of thing he always dreams about have desensitized him to the king's horrors. He's seen everything the king has done. He's seen everything he's going to do.  

Time to get to work. Today's the big day, after all. 

 

The queen's quarters are unlocked, as usual, and he makes a mental note to warn her about that. He wonders how much it would change the future if the queen escaped to Lienid before any of the horrors began. Then he stops to actually give it thought.  

The idea has merit.  

 _Queen_ _Ashen waves from the bow of a Lienid boat, the one always docked in the docks for just such an occasion. He waves back with a sickly mixture of relief and agony twisting his features. Beside him, the king smiles cruelly to see his playthings go. His arm tightens around Haedyn's shoulders, squeezing the breath out of him like he's being crushed._  

He frowns, wondering, but then he wonders where that would put Her, the girl in his dreams who kills Leck in front of Lienid's royal family. The queen would live, true, but the princess would never be so strong as she could be, as she would grow to be. The girl would never leave that place with that person and come here, to Monsea.  

The queen startles behind him. "Haedyn? Are you alright?"  

He turns. Stares at her. Debates internally. "My Lady," he says, "I suggest you find the best locksmith in the city to secure your doors. There's going to be a situation soon that you will find yourself wanting good locks."  

She smiles uncertainly, but he says nothing more on the subject. 

 

 _He_ _is taking the queen's dinner to her rooms on a cart. The hallway is long and bright, echoing the thunder of the cart's progress back to him. He is bleeding; there is blood dripping from his cheekbones and flowing evenly down his neck, but it doesn't seem anything to worry about. King Leck had told him it was merely decorations for the queen, that she would admire the sight, and so he wore it proudly, chin high and eyes_ _unfocu_ _sed_ _. He knocks cordially on the door and smiles when it opens, confused by the scream of horror._  

The dreams are getting darker, shadowing Haedyn as he turns corners in the castle. He's dreamed of today as well, knowing to go to the tower room in the far hallway and wait for the young queen- no, princess still. The dream of Leck's mutilation of the other servants is a recurring one, probably because it's going to happen a lot once this thing begins.  

He's begun to notice serving girls missing from the kitchens and around tables, boys disappearing one day and returning with bruises that no one sees or cuts no one bandages, not even the boys themselves.  

The queen had noticed as well, it seemed. Her quarters had gained all new locks and a child's bed had been moved into one of the rooms, for 'slumber parties', if she was to be believed. Princess Bitterblue wasn't quite old enough for that to be seen as a lie so it was let to stand. But, young as the princess was, she would escape her mother's worried gaze to explore as soon as she possibly could, and there were things about the future he  _could_ change, so he did. 

Starting with intercepting the princess from rooms she should not be in, if she did not want her father to find her. Which he would, in exactly three half-turns of a minute, in the sense of Leck's absurd clocks.  

He stepped into the drawing room of the king and smiled at the little girl. "Hello, Princess Bitterblue. Your mother would be worried to know where you've been hiding." 

The girl peered around a chair. "Who're you?" She questioned distrustfully, eyes a tiny pair of slits in Leck's dim light. 

"My name is Haedyn, Lady, and I have come to fetch you. Surely you'd like to go see the library with me? I am certain we can find a good book or two for you to read." 

The girl snorted, but after a second she seemed to decide he was alright. She hopped out of the puffy chair she'd hidden away in and took his hand. "Can we go see Death and Lovelace?" She asked cautiously. 

He smiled straight ahead, mechanically feeling his cheeks pull up like curtains. "Of course, my Queen." 

 

It began to get worse; Leck went on his first rampage that no one but Haedyn, the queen, the princess, and a few of the king's advisors noticed. Haedyn heard of it from the kitchens, watched the servants who took meals to the queen's rooms return bloodied and hurt but smiling and vapid.  

He sent word to Lienid of the Queen's death. By the time they arrived she'd be dead anyway, and doing this wouldn't change the future all too much.  

 _She_ was coming, he could feel it. The girl who would end Leck's reign. The boy was coming too, but Haedyn didn't see many dreams of him. There was one, of the boy stumbling from a cabin to flounder in a lake before seeming to glide smoothly into himself, but Haedyn didn't get much from that besides the fact that the boy and Her separated and there was something wrong with his sight.  

There was a boy for Bitterblue, as well; one hidden away in the city who knew next to nothing of her but soon would know almost everything about her. Sapphire, his name was, and Haedyn spent one of his valuable days off observing the boy.Heinteracted with the boy a few times, buying things from the store on occasion. The last time he visited, he pulled the boy aside. 

"A girl is going to meet you soon. Well, not soon; I always get times mixed up, my Grace, you know, and she's going to need you. Trust her but remember that there is always something secret about everyone you meet, even yourself." He said quickly, knowing that any minute guards would walk around the corner and get curious, but it was necessary for the boy to meet the princess. 

"What-?" The boy tried to ask, but Haedyn was already moving away. Then he ducked back. "And figure out your Grace. Spend some time helping Teddy get some sleep." He grinned and slipped away.  

 

Then it became his turn to visit the queen. This was the day the queen would let her daughter escape and send herself to her death. Hopefully, Haedyn would be joining her; in any future where he survived, there was some sort of catastrophe for Monsea, and in one dream, for the seven kingdoms all.  

The king's smile made him nauseous but he smiled cordially back. "My King, what might you require of me this evening?"  

And then he sat back and let the visions rush through his head to distract himself from what the king was about to do. 

 

 _The_ _rope is barely tied strong enough. If not for the note, Ashen would have been unprepared for when Leck's face peeked through the window and he roared in anger. He shoves something through the tiny opening furiously and Ashen watches in horror as the servant who'd warned her at the very beginning of it all, the one_ _who'd_ _kept Bitterblue safe when she couldn't, plummeted past her to land with a sound like something being crushed. Bitterblue screams in terror below her and Ashen swallows._ _Leck_ _is going to kill her. This she knows; the note had been sent long ago, long enough that she was prepared for the escape and the possibility that she would die._  

 _She_ _must get Bitterblue into the trees; the note had mentioned a log with a hole as the pick-up point, and Ashen's daughter will be safe, no matter what happens to Ashen herself._  

 _When_ _her toes hit the ground she is running, arms around Bitterblue and the forest tearing past, but she is not quick enough to miss the sight of a crumpled body lying, naked and bloody, at the foot of the tower wall like a grounded bird. The boy's eyes are open; they are the fiery orange of a dying fire fighting for breath and the shiny, crystalline black of a beetle's back after rain. Ashen tries not to dwell on the boy's Grace; it's Haedyn, and she's known his Grace all along._  

 

He wakes, sometime after, to the eyes of his Queen and her Consort. The girl stands near the back with the Lienid prince and the Middluns prince and the boy's soon-to-be-Consort. Or perhaps they are Consort already; Haedyn's never been very good with times.  

"Good morning, Haedyn Laeffyrson." Queen Bitterblue greets cordially. "Do you know who I am?"  

He sits up carefully and bows as low as possible. "At long last, you are my Queen. I have waited for your reign." 

"Your Grace was foresight, was it not? To see the future in visions and dreams." She frowned at him with sadness reined in tight. "Did you ever see what he would do?"  

He doesn't need to ask who she means. "My Lady, the moment he returned when I was a child, I knew I was meant to be at court, for I saw his eye in my dreams and you standing as a Queen in a court ravaged by something worse than war. When I arrived, I saw the night of Leck's death at the hands of a girl, and you behind her, and I knew there was hope for the future, if it stayed the same." 

She smiled at him gracefully. "Welcome back, Haedyn. I remember how you used to serve my mother, you know. How you'd lure me out of his rooms with promises of books or sword-fighting practice or petting the birds by Leck's fountains."  

Haedyn smiled back at her. "I'd love to discuss this with you further, My Lady, but I'm afraid there is a matter to discuss." Her eyebrow rose. "There is a woman coming, Queen Bitterblue, named Lady Byr, and she is going to tell you a great many things, and you will lose something dear to you peacefully and see it returned safely, and no more shall I say."  

She smirked at him. "For fear of changing the future?" 

He stared at her gravely for a moment. "Aye," he said finally, letting his eyes tilt in mirth, "for what else have we, in these desperate times?"

**Author's Note:**

> Eh? No? Yes? Comments are nice...


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